Reflects on the Day
by MelWil
Summary: "Yet they had looked at him, all of them, just for a second, and they had expected something different from him."


Title: Reflects on the Day  
Author: MelWil  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: All four books  
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me, nor do I make any money. They belong to J.K. Rowling et al.  
Feedback: Is delightful: lina_wilson@hotmail.com  
Author's note: The title is from Ben Folds, "Fred Jones Part 2"

~*~

Severus Snape was not prone to outlandish bursts of emotion. In fact he seemed to have only three emotions: a gruesome glee that sneered the edges of his lips whenever the Slytherin house managed to achieve, and fearsome anger that burnt whenever his students pissed him off, and a smarmy smirk that he wore as easily as his fluent black robes. His students would whisper rumours to each other, telling tales abut how he had concocted some potions, something hideous, that was able to cloak all other emotions. He tried to encourage the rumour, he didn't favour the phenomena of emotion, and he liked to disengage himself from it as much as possible.

Yet they had looked at him, all of them, just for a second, and they had expected something different from him. They had looked at him and he felt like the petulant child who had refused to do his homework. He wasn't sure what they had wanted from him, what emotions they had wanted to see, but he knew he didn't have it within him. Maybe they wanted to see sorrow, or despair, or the tears for the dead wizards whose faces he couldn't even recall. He didn't know what they wanted, but he suspected that most of them hadn't expected the cold rage he was drenched in.

Life always got harder when you pulled yourself out of the shadows. He'd done it fifteen years earlier, when he had come to the imposing Hogwarts castle, on a foggy, frosty morning. Dumbledore had offered him a sanctuary, a clear place to think, a place where he would be protected. He had offered more than Severus had anticipated, a unvarying trust that both soothed and disturbed him, a path that enabled him to dodge death at Voldemort's hands, a way to avoid the horrendous punishments of the Ministry. Finally, Voldemort had been defeated, and Snape had retreated into the dark dungeons of the school, a place where the sensible students feared to venture.

He'd always been content to remain in the background. He had spent his school days there, undistinguished except in the overlooked discipline he adored. Potions had been nothing when he was at school. What was the use of spending hours and days mixing up a complicated potion, when you could transfigure or charm something in an instant, or you could show off with a flashy unicorn or a growling crup tied up next to your front door. Potions were a poor weapon when you were surrounded by curses and hexes. Potions were useless when you had to convince wizards and witches that you had changed. 

Potions were sneaky things, concocted in damp corners, where their wafting fumes couldn't reach delicate noses. They could be dripped from great heights onto unsuspecting heads below. They could be slipped into vacant drinks, sipped by unsuspecting victims. But potions had to be hidden, slipped inside oversized sleeves, tucked into secret compartments of special belts. Everyone in the wizarding world carried a wand, only the sly carried potions with them. 

He understood that many wizards had suspected him of being a Death Eater. Whenever he had been around they had looked at him, peering at him from the corners of their eyes, careless whispers reaching the eager ears of their children and their children's friends. He understood that, he had always worn the familiar signs, draped over him like a flashing light. He was clever and ambitious, with too many years interest in the Dark Arts. He lurked in dim, damp places, where no one could find him beneath the shadows. And he was a Slytherin, you couldn't get much more proof than that. 

Except that he did have more proof than that, his own personal proof that stung, and ached and haunted him in his nightmares. He'd tried to forget that it was there, but even when you couldn't see it, he had continued to feel it. But then, when he'd had to, he'd stood in the hospital wing with his sleeve shoved above his elbow. He'd flashed his proof, the Dark Mark, for anyone who possessed eyes to see. That bumbling fool, Cornelius Fudge, drunk on power that wasn't even real, had recoiled from him. The fool had darted backwards as if Severus was a hideous monster. He supposed that monster was one description for him.

Minerva McGonagall had gasped when she'd seen the mark, looking at him as if the ghosts of dead students were dancing around his head. Dumbledore hadn't moved, he'd seen the sign before, seen the way it grew darker, and he'd known exactly what it meant. Potter and Granger had studied him with wide, righteous eyes, and he'd loathed them because they didn't know what it was to be conflicted, and because they didn't know that they were his youth all over again. The dog, Sirius, sitting next to Potter's bed had growled, a guttural growl that had echoed in his head.

He hadn't been able to look at the three Weasleys that had been crowded around Potter. He had a haunting feeling that the Weasley's burden was going to be a heavy one, that they would pay severely in the upcoming battles, and he wanted to disassociate himself from them. It was hard to be in the company of a family that was so good, that would devote their lives to overcoming evil, that had so much love for each other and for the people that surrounded them. There was no way these decent people would escape unscathed.

Most of the decent people he knew in the wizarding world were Gryffindors. Despite his best intentions, his life had become entwined with countless Gryffindor souls. It had been the sorting hat at first, the ragged hat with its careful, teasing, deliberations. It had suggested that there might be a place for him in Gryffindor, that deep inside him there was a core goodness and a real bravery. He had sneered, and the hat had sorted him into Slytherin, the home of his father and his grand father. But the relief was never enough to make his forget that he could have been something else.

He used to laugh when he'd heard stories of his potions killing Gryffindors. He'd chuckled at tales of the Gryffindors dying at the hands of brutish Death Eaters. He'd believed that each Gryffindor death was another tick in his personal Slytherin column, another thing to prove that the sorting hat hadn't made a mistake. But it didn't mean he remembered the faces of the dead, in fact he did everything he could to remove them from his mind. He had managed ten years of restless peace before he was forced to remember everything. 

The only victims face he saw these days was the face of James Potter. It sat in front of him, insolently, it's only blemish being Lily's startling eyes. It haunted him in dark corridors, chased after him when he moved around the castle, lurked in the corners of his personal quarters. There was no possible way to move on with that face in front of him.

They had looked at him, stared at the mark on his arm, and he didn't know if he was a friend or an enemy. But Dumbledore, the most Gryffindor of them all, had given him a mission to do. He would do it, and he would bear the consequences, and he would still be confused about what he was really doing. But now, right now, he sat in his dark room, where potions bubbled merrily in the corners and the pain in his arm soothed, and there was only one face he could see. 


End file.
